For the past seven years, Renee Martin has created necklaces, earrings and bracelets almost entirely out of a button collection. “I’ve been collecting (buttons) for 25 years,” Martin said. “Seven years ago, I decided to start making jewelry.”

Under the name Remarkably Buttons, the Hopkinton resident sells her work at craft fairs and on the website Etsy. Some of the pieces sell for as little as $5. Her statement pieces and best-sellers – adjustable-length crescent-moon-shaped necklaces with more than 30 buttons – go for $20 to $50.

“I really believe in re-purposing,” said Martin, who attended fashion school in New York. “They (buttons) should be jewelry instead of sitting in grandma’s tin.”

In her home work room, buttons are categorized by color, style or era. They are made of a wide variety of materials, including wood, ceramic, plastic, glass, shell and fabric. There are a few metal pieces and even buttons made of a very early plastic called celluloid.

Where did she get them all?

“My husband and I were on vacation, and there was this woman selling an old Singer sewing machine on the side of the road,” Martin recalled.

Martin couldn’t make a deal with the 93-year-old woman for the sewing machine, but she was intrigued by the four pickle jars sitting next to the machine. They were filled with buttons.

“I thought, ‘I have to buy these because she’s been saving them her entire life,’” Martin said, adding that the woman only asked $10 for the collection. “Ten dollars for 93 years!”

Martin said it’s the detail, variety and history of buttons that make her keep collecting. She has been sent even more buttons since people began hearing about her jewelry-making endeavor. Once, she said, a nun sent her a suitcase full of buttons.

Martin knows the backgrounds of her buttons.

“This is bakelite, an early plastic,” she said, pointing out a large green button on a tribal-themed necklace.

Martin said her daughter, Olivia, has helped with Remarkably Buttons, injecting a lot of good business sense into the endeavor. It was Olivia’s idea to market the less expensive earrings in nice packaging, to sell button pendants on their own, also for less, and to string some of the most colorful buttons to make bracelets for children.

“Actually, this was one of her college essays,” Martin said of Olivia, a graduating high school senior.